Chương 18
“I will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“That means you’re waiting for a better reality.”
He leaned his head against the wall.
“I am waiting until I can say it without frightening her.”
“You can’t.”
“I know.”
She put the drawer back into place and opened it twice.
It moved smoothly.
“Four years is half the life she remembers,” Lena said.
“Yes.”
“She’ll be angry.”
“Yes.”
“She might not forgive you.”
His face tightened.
“I know.”
Lena sat beside him on the floor.
For a while they listened to Lily practice piano downstairs. She repeatedly missed the same note, stopped, and began again.
“Why did you come into the alley without an umbrella?” Lena asked.
Dominic looked at her.
“What?”
“The night you found us. Everyone else wore coats. You stepped into heavy rain in a suit.”
“I wasn’t thinking about rain.”
“I know. It was stupid.”
He smiled faintly.
“You’ve been saving that criticism for six weeks?”
“I had more urgent ones.”
The piano stopped.
Dominic looked toward the door.
“I was afraid to touch her,” he said.
“I saw.”
“I thought if I touched her, I would know how close I had come to losing her.”
“You already knew.”
“Knowing from a distance is different.”
Lena looked down at the screwdriver in her hand.
“Did you think I was involved?”
“For several minutes.”
“That long?”
“You were there. You had her phone. She held your hand. Nothing in my life had taught me to trust the person who looked innocent.”
“What changed?”
“You told me to talk about crackers.”
She laughed softly.
“That was your evidence?”
“It was the first useful order anyone had given me in years.”
The plea hearing took place in October.
Dominic admitted to financial crimes, conspiracy, obstruction, and directing illegal operations through several companies. The kidnapping charge applied to Vincent and Aaron, not to him, but prosecutors described the system Dominic created as the necessary condition for Lily’s abduction.
He did not dispute it.
The court allowed him to remain free until sentencing because of his cooperation and the continuing investigations. He wore an ankle monitor beneath tailored trousers and complained only when Lily asked whether it beeped.
“It does not,” he said.
She looked disappointed.
Vincent refused a plea agreement.
His attorney argued that Aaron had acted independently and that Vincent’s statements had been taken out of context. The case would continue for months, perhaps years.
Lena gave testimony before a grand jury. Her name appeared in the news again. This time strangers called her brave, opportunistic, heroic, foolish, and disloyal.
She learned that public opinion was less like a verdict than weather. It changed direction, ruined plans, and rarely apologized.
She found a new apartment in Ravenswood above a bakery. It had warped floors, a working hallway light, and a bedroom window that faced an actual tree.
Mrs. Patel gave her a laundry basket as a moving gift.
“You always carry clothes in garbage bags,” she said. “It is depressing.”
Lily drew a wolf on the side of the basket.
Dominic paid none of the deposit.
He did carry boxes.
On moving day, one of his security men reached for a carton marked BOOKS. Dominic took it first.
“You’re proving something,” Lena said.
“I’m carrying a box.”
“You’re breathing like it insulted you.”
“The bottom is weak.”
“So are your arms.”
He looked at her over the carton. “You’ve seen my arms.”
“Unfortunately, sleeves exist.”
Mrs. Patel laughed from the sidewalk.
Dominic nearly dropped the box.
The ordinary embarrassment pleased Lena more than it should have.
By winter, Lily had returned to school.
She no longer slept with the lights on, but she kept the teddy bear beneath her pillow. She attended therapy twice a week. She disliked being driven underground and asked that pickups happen where she could see the sky.
The school changed its procedures.
Parents complained about delays.
Some blamed Lily.
Dominic wanted the names of those parents.
Lena told him no.
He obtained them anyway and did nothing, which counted as progress.
On Fridays, Lily still chose white tulips for Bianca’s grave.
One cold afternoon, she invited Lena to come.
Bianca Rosetti’s grave stood beneath a bare maple in a cemetery outside the city. The stone was simple compared with everything else Dominic owned.
Lily placed the flowers near the name.
“She hated white,” Dominic said.
“I know,” Lena replied.
Lily looked up. “She liked orange.”
“Then why do you keep buying white?” Lena asked.
The girl shrugged.
“Daddy started it.”
Dominic put his hands into his coat pockets.
“I thought white was appropriate.”
“For grief?” Lena asked.
“For apologies.”
Lily pulled one orange ribbon from her pocket and tied it around the tulips.
“There,” she said. “Now she won’t be annoyed.”
They stood in the cold without speaking.
A groundskeeper drove past in a small utility cart, singing badly to a song on the radio. Somewhere beyond the trees, traffic moved along the highway. Lily became bored before the adults did and began scraping frost from a bench with her glove.
Dominic looked at the carved name.
“I turned over the original maintenance report,” he said.
Lena nodded.
“Vincent knew the brake warning was serious.”
“Does that change the charges?”
“Possibly.”
“Does it change what happened?”
“No.”
He removed a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
It was a copy of Bianca’s handwritten statement. He handed it to Lena.
She did not open it.
“What does it say?”
“That she believed I could still choose Lily over the family business.”
“She was right.”
“Three years late.”
“She wasn’t right on time.”
Dominic looked at her.
Lena touched the folded paper.
“You don’t have to turn every regret into a sentence against yourself.”
“I thought you wanted accountability.”
“I do. Self-hatred is cheaper.”
He looked back at the grave.
Lily called from the bench. “Can we get hot chocolate?”
Dominic said, “In a minute.”
“That means no,” Lily told Lena.
May you like
“It sometimes means he’s scared of both answers.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Adults are exhausting.”
